The ‘glocal’ strategy behind the Inter Miami brand, the most Latin club in the MLS
Understand why David Beckham’s American franchise has its name in Spanish, the colors pink and black and other elements
One of the most expanding leagues in football is the United States League, Major League Soccer (MLS). Following the structure of the main leagues in the country, such as NBA and NFL, the MLS does not have relegations or accesses of teams, with changes of teams only when new franchises are created or reallocated.
Since 2017 every year a new club is inserted in the league that today has 26 participants. With higher demand, higher values are also for new entrants: in 2007, for example, Toronto FC paid $ 10 million to join the league, and in 2019 a new franchise that will be based in Charlotte, scheduled to debut in 2022 , was acquired for US $ 325 million, an increase of 3,250% in twelve years.
Among the “new faces” of MLS is the team owned by the Miami Freedom Park LLC group, formed by Bolivian businessman Marcelo Claure (owner of Club Bolívar-BOL and most recently Girona-ESP), brothers Jose and Jorge Mas, Masayoshi Son and David Beckham, the latter being primarily responsible for creating the club. When he moved to play for the LA Galaxy, Beckham obtained a future purchase option for a franchise in the league, for a modest $ 25 million, an option exercised in 2014, a bargain back then.
Four years later, in 2018, the team revealed its name, shield and official colors, in addition to having approved its entry into the MLS as of the 2020 season. This brand building process, however, has been structured for a long time and, apparently , was a very consistent choice.
Brand name and visual identity
To build a brand from scratch, club owners opted for an increasingly clear trend in football clubs in the United States, that of simplification. More “generic” names take care of the MLS franchise names, which often have the name of the city plus terms like City, United or just FC. Montreal Impact, for example, is considering following the same path, and being renamed Montréal FC.
This simplification demonstrates the global character that several franchises aim to achieve. At first the name may seem like a minor issue until we think about the difficulty that teams like Borussia Mönchengladbach, Wolverhampton and Strasbourg can have when trying to expand their brands and be easily recognized and pronounced.
The name of the Florida club has such a global character that it even being sued the Internazionale in Milan that claimed that the term “Inter” was synonymous with the name of the Italian club that had already applied for a patent and trademark for exclusive commercial rights. about the term in the United States. If “AC Miami”, another name considered together with “Athletic Miami”, had been chosen, we would also have similarities with another great Milan team, AC Milan.
However, the official name of the Inter Miami Club de Fútbol team also brings a focus on the local community. According to the U.S. Census, approximately 72.5% of Miami’s population is of Hispanic or Latin origin, greatly influenced by the migratory flows from several countries in Latin America, which justifies the choice of the Castilian language in the nomination. Owner David Beckham addressed this issue:
“We are a new team, but we are a city with a lot of history and I think that’s what we wanted to create with the shield. But also the authenticity, the South American flavor that we wanted there. We also needed that modern touch because that’s what Miami is all about ”
This positioning is comparable with La Liga’s “Glocal” strategy, which it adopts has global guidelines, but adaptable to different markets (countries).
The agency responsible for the elaboration of the club’s shield was the American Doubleday & Cartwright, who had redesigned the NBA Milwaukee Bucks emblem in 2015. After extensive research, the designers elaborated more than a thousand sketches for the creation of the shield, in their most using elements such as sun, beach, animals and the letter “M”.
In the end, it was decided that the Inter Miami logo (photo below) would use white herons, typical animals of the city representing freedom, intertwined forming the letter “M”. The pink color, in turn, was inspired by the Miami sky, both at dawn and dusk.
The presence of the sun and the moon within the same circumference, representing an eclipse are also related to Miami, illustrating an active city during the day and night. The sun received seven rays in honor of the classic shirt number worn by David Beckham as a player.
The letters MMXX are Roman numerals representing the year 2020, the team’s debut in MLS, while a barely noticeable element is that the logo is formed by two different formats: a circle and a shield. These represent the idea of union and strength, respectively and, in addition, they can be used commercially in different ways.
One of the main elements of a brand is its transferability, when used in other colors (black, pink, white shirt …) or even in other products, such as shirts, caps, backpacks etc. It would not be surprising that at some point, only the “internal” part of the logo, that is, the shield with herons, is used at times, to facilitate the association of the fan / consumer with the club; the simpler a shield is, the faster it is remembered.
Latinity not just in name
The cohesion of bringing a “South American flavor” as David Beckham said, also applies on the pitch. Of the 29 athletes in the squad, 10 are Latinos (six Argentines, two Mexicans, one Venezuelan and one Colombian) in addition to seven other foreigners from other nationalities.
The highlight is the recent signing of Argentine striker Gonzalo Higuaín (photo below), a former player of Juventus and the Argentine national team who arrived at the team free of charge. The casting of the cast, however, is not based only on the presence of big names, but on the bet of young players:
“What I found in time is that you never really recapture that investment and it actually hurts the club in the long term. What you see now here is there’s a larger investment in buying younger players and developing them. (…) At the end of it all, you hopefully get an opportunity to sell that player for some return”, said Inter’s sporting director Paul McDonough.
The club’s three most expensive signings involve South American names: Rodolfo Pizarro, a 26-year-old midfielder from the Mexican national team, was bought for approximately € 11 million, while 19-year-old Argentine youth, Matías Pellegrini and Julián Carranza cost € 8.1 million and € 5.4 million respectively to the Florida team.
The official website of Inter Miami is also available in the Spanish version, another action that brings fans closer to the club, which has the potential to form a loyal fan base, who see themselves represented on the field, even if it is in the language.
LinkedIn: theodoromontoto
